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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (8611)	3/15/2001 11:05:23 AM
From: Eric L	Respond to of 196450

Re: A European take on Qualcomm in Cannnes >> Qualcomm's Drive To Promote cdma2000 Marred By Renewed Caution On 3G Roll->>Out Mike Woolfrey Research Analyst EMC Cellular Qualcomm's rocky share ride continued following Irwin Jacobs' remarks in the press in the days after the 3GSM World Congress. This, despite the apparent strong position of the company within the 3G marketplace. His comments that W-CDMA systems are likely to be delayed until 2004/2005. Whilst his thoughts are by no means unique, to hear a CEO of a major industry player playing down 3G certainly is. However the statement seems more logical with the qualifying comment that Qualcomm's 3G system, cdma2000 1x is already being deployed and will see progressive roll-outs through 2002. The result of his comments was a Qualcomm share price drop 20%. Qualcomm owns patents and intellectual property rights on all third generation CDMA types (cdma2000, TD-SCDMA or W-CDMA) and has, naturally, maintained it would receive royalties regardless of which 3G path is most favoured by operators. Nevertheless Qualcomm would no doubt prefer it if companies opted for the cdma2000, as the royalties received would be greater. cdma2000 is Qualcomm's own 3G solution, whereas W-CDMA and TD-SCDMA are variations of CDMA developed by third parties. Despite this, Qualcomm has strived to push cdma2000 in markets where 2G systems are not cdmaOne/IS-95A, promoting the higher efficiency of spectrum and radio interface that comes with CDMA. To date operators deploying cdma2000 have all used cdmaOne as its digital standard. With the 3G future for TDMA operators seeming unclear, it was thought that some may opt to move to cdma2000 rather than EDGE and UMTS. In fact some TDMA operators were testing cdma2000 systems throughout 2000, but with the decision by AT&T Wireless and other American TDMA operators to follow a GPRS/EDGE/W-CDMA path, it looks as if cdma2000 growth will be limited to existing CDMA markets. Whilst GPRS continues to be delayed and fails to reach expected data rates, the 2.5G solution for cdma2000 looks as if it will run to plan. Operators in Korea, Canada and the USA are all looking to deploy cdma2000 1x systems in late 2001 or early 2002. This is a timescale not dissimilar to that of operators offering GPRS. Whilst it remains to be seen whether manufacturers and operators can meet this timescale, other areas seem to be on time. Unlike GPRS, the issue of handset availability seems less of a problem. Both Motorola and Ericsson maintain that handset development is running on a parallel timescale to infrastructure and whilst Lucent does not manufacture handsets it allows manufacturers to test handsets on its test networks, indicating that manufacturers are successfully doing so. Data rates are meeting the required level of 144Kbps, with ideal scenarios seeing uplink speeds of 307Kbps. Despite the comparative success of 2.5G CDMA systems (1x) against GSM offerings (GPRS), Qualcomm opted to push its full 3G offerings at the recent 3GSM congress in Cannes. cdma2000 1x EV or Evolution is full blown 3G and offers increased voice capacity of 50-100% and data rates of 2.4Mbps. In Cannes Qualcomm exhibited as two separate divisions, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) and Qualcomm Corporate. The Qualcomm Corporate stand demonstrated the initial capabilities of cdma2000 1x EV. Qualcomm established a small private network in the Cannes area, by leasing 1900MHz spectrum from the French military and erecting one temporary BTS. This provided coverage along the sea front. The demonstration used a mobile modem (model MSM 4500) attached to a PC, and at the BTS a FPGA (field programmable gate array) was used. This is a chip specifically designed for HDR demos and is designed to be a leader to the CSM 5500, to be used in trials later this summer. Whilst the modem used was not a production model, it was attached to the back of a laptop with mini antennas. It is expected that modem card manufacturers like Sierra Wireless and Novatel (both Qualcomm licence holders) are to produce modem cards when the chipsets are ready (Q3 2001). This will obviously reduce the size to that of a standard PC card. The test successfully demonstrated peak data rates of 2.4 Mbps, showing streaming video and internet surfing. The only limitation on downloads is the capacity of local ISPs. With modem card development ahead of handsets, and laptops obviously not suffering from the same user interface problems as a mobile handset or PDA, it may well mean that early users of cdma2000 1x EV networks will be corporate users connecting to LANs. It is expected that such products will be on the market for late 2001 or early 2002. Qualcomm's ultimate goal is to see a multi-protocol chip as a solution to the various technologies and frequencies around the world. The recent announcement of the MSM 6xxx family is testament to this. The chipset has some way to go, with GSM property rights and full backward interoperabilty acting as initial hurdles. However Qualcomm currently offers chipset families for both cdma2000 and W-CDMA. Basic chipsets: * MSM - Mobile Station Modem, handset chip and software that performs all signalling processing in unit * CSM - Cell Site Modem, a digital baseband modem for infrastructure and test equipment * gpsOne - Offered by SnapTrack (Qualcomm company), a location solution that combines network configuration and GPS (satellite navigation) * QDSP - Digital signal processor, built into MSM chipsets. Enables developers to produce unique applications, such as speech compression recognition, echo cancellation and built in GPS location * IFR and IFT Provide IF to Baseband and vice - versa processing * PA & PM Offers power amplification and management Chipset standards: * MSM 5105 Migration path for cdmaOne operators. Solution is built on MSM 3100 family and is IS-95A/B and cdma2000 1x compatible, with data rates upto 153 Kbps * MSM 5200 Single mode W-CDMA chipset and solution, data rates of 384 Kbps * MSM 5500 HDR or 1x EV chipset, supporting data rates upto 2.4 Mbps * MSM 6xxxx Chipset that combines all of the above, offering 2G backward compatibility as well as cdma2000 1x EV and W-CDMA << - Eric -